Oldal 232 [232]
HENDRIK VANMASSENHOVE
is religious. It does not mean however that he knows the development of his¬
tory; because the past cannot be known in its full meaning and the future is
not yet clear, but God is the guarantee that existence has sense. Because his¬
tory is never fully known, Lotze criticized Georg Friedrich Hegel’s (1770-1831)
worldview based solely on the idea of history.
THE INFLUENCE OF LOTZE
That Lotze had a huge influence is evident from the amount of secondary lit¬
erature about his thought at the end of his life and soon after his death. Until
the 1930s interest remained, but diminished considerably afterwards. From the
1970s on, however, there was renewed interest-in his philosophy.
Looking more closely at publications in relation to Lotze the following can
be stated. Apart from the earlier economic value theory, a lot of works on value
appeared from the 1930s on. As Loetze was the initiator of value theory, it
could be assigned to his influence. Before Lotze, works on ethics were always
concerned with virtue; with the general adoption of value theory, a significant
shift took place. Lotze decidedly developed an all-encompassing approach to
value theory.”
But, was it not Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) “Umwertung aller Werte”
which was responsible for this phenomenon? It cannot be denied that Ni¬
etzsche’s value theory was very influential, but the influence of Lotze must
not be underestimated either, certainly not in the academic world. It was from
Loetze, and not Nietzsche, that Wilhelm Windelband (1848-1915) learned the
value theory that had such a central part in his thought, and from Windelband
it passed to the science of history and to sociology. Moreover, Nietzsche himself
knew about Lotze. Moreover, Nietzsche himself knew about Lotze, and names
him as an influence in the development of his own Perspectivism.
Two main concepts of Lotze were present in the Neo-Kantian school, namely
the concepts of value and “gelten”, especially as to the cultural and historical
approaches. Lotzean thought led for instance to the value debate afterwards.
Whereas the Southwest German School emphasized the concepts of “holding”
and of value, the Marburger school was focused on the logical unity of thinking.
“Holding” in the social sciences became the counterpart of the natural sciences’
“fact”, and “valuation” served as the foundation of ethics. It was mainly Lotze’s
2 Of the recent literature with a overview of Lotze’s interpretation see WOODWARD, William,
R., Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
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